Heaven or hell: Will Moldovan protests enter the next stage tomorrow?

For tomorrow, 11 am EET (10 am CET), the three main opposition parties in Moldova are calling for new protests on the Piaţa Marii Adunări Naţionale (PMAN), demonstrating against the harsh reprisals of the Communist regime during the last days.

In order to understand the situation, I have tried to get voices from Moldova during the last days.

What I get are responses that openly show that very optimistic or at least realistic people have become very negative since Tuesday. Most express fear and confusion about a situation that is new in Moldova, unseen in the last 20 years. Most think that the riots which broke out last Tuesday were provoked by actors that would profit from a situation in which the demonstration against alleged frauds during the elections would not end peacefully.

I see and hear open criticism about the international community in Chisinau and abroad, for its lack of action, for its diplomatic restraint. But I have also heard criticism about the political opposition that lacks true leadership and which continued what it was doing during the election campaign: Jumping from complaint to complaint, but mostly without presenting professional proof for the allegations.

But is most striking is the shocked tone when people describe the reactions from the Communist authorities during the last days, arresting hundreds of young people, beating national and expelling international journalists, blocking independent and critical news sources, provoking a diplomatic conflict with Romania. Even people who have seen worse in the past are horrified by what is going on now.

And what I see now is determination for tomorrow's demonstrations.

I am not sure whether the opposition will get enough people on the streets to make itself heard, in Moldova and abroad, especially with the overrated Twitter #pman hashtag being just noise by now. I am not sure whether certain elements will not be able to turn a protest that is intended to be peaceful into violent demonstrations again.

And I am not sure about the reactions of a state and its authorities which have shown considerable paranoia lately - a state which might be ready to overreact against its own citizens in the best manners of an autocratic state that is afraid of losing control and that has received open support for repressive measures by Russian authorities, those Russian authorities that also foster the internal but internationalised conflict with the separatist Transnistrian region in Moldova.

The question is: Where is Moldova going tomorrow - to heaven or to hell?

Previous articles in this blog:

• Human rights and the rule of law in Moldova under attack after the protests
  
• The Moldovan case: Some backgrounds on the political situation 
  
• Developing story: Violent demonstrations in Moldova after Sunday's elections
  
• Elections in Moldova: Governing Communists win, opposition demands re-elections - updated (3x) 
  
• Moldova's parliamentary elections in April: One fourth of electorate left aside?
  

Why just Georgia? - On the refocussing of European institutions

Sorry, but when I read declarations like this one from the Greek OSCE presidency I ask myself why European institutions seem to over-focus on Georgia.

Diplomacy prefers to come after the crisis, then spends millions of Euros on post-treatment, shortens money for other regions (what about the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova, Nagorno Karabakh...?) and wonders why the situation in those forgotten countries degrades soon afterwards.

Turning every Euro-Cent for preventive measures and wasting large sums on worthless post-conflict activities is just stupid, but almost nobody seems to notice...

Getting rid of public money: An international perspective

Something I have heard today from a colleague working for an international organisation:

Damn, I still have 20,000 Euros on this travel costs budget line of programme XYZ - and since I cannot transfer them to another budget line, I have to find ways how to make people travel around in order to be able to spend that money before the programme finishes!

This kind of attitude makes me really angry: People working for an public organisations and are using public money are looking for ways how to get rid of this money just in order not to have anything left.

It shows an absolute lack of understanding about what kind of money they are using and spending. It shows that the incentive system build into some public (national or international) organisations is totally wrong and contributes to excessive spending and especially miss-spending of resources that could well be used for better purposes.

Not to talk about the doubling of work of certain organisations without producing better results.

Why I don't blog. And why I should blog more.

The reason I am not blogging like hell these days is that I am working. Not that I am not working the rest of the time, but these days, it's kind of 110% busy.

And the reason are international experts, or to be more precise, the events we (my colleagues and me) have to organise together with these experts. In fact, it is not so much the experts but rather the fact that we have to bring these experts together with state institutions that makes this rather complicated and time-consuming - and I am not talking of state institutions of Germany or Great Britain (although I am not always sure whether this would actually pose less problems).

I would like to tell you more, but for diplomatic reasons I have to refrain from more preciseness. But I can tell you that working for an international organisation offers quite interesting insights into the life of different state officials from different countries.

The problem: The more you work with them, the more you have doubts about the capacities of some of them. Or to put it more self-critically: The more you work with them, the less you are sure that you are capable, because you don't see the results you would like to see.

I think that more transparency would help, and I think that an open debate about many of the issues I have seen during my recent posts would be of help. But for diplomatic reasons it is difficult to do it directly.

So I should blog more about this, because it is of relevance for the public, for the transparency of how national and international organisations work, and it would be of use for the democratic control of what we do.

But how to do it, if you risk to be fined or fired, or if a simple critique can lead to diplomatic problems?

Friday's thought: The role of experts of international organisations

The following sentence I heard during this week at a workshop with national participants and international experts:

"We [the international organisations] are not here to judge [over the countries] but to provide our advice and especially to learn - because if we would not want to learn, we would just send letters, not our experts."

This was one of the better sentences of the day.

Because: Quite often you get the impression that some experts just come to sell their standard knowledge to non-standard audiences, without proper adaptation, without proper awareness of local situations. And the money they receive for this (including travel costs) is quite huge.

Better not to break down the budgets of international organisations to see how much they spend on experts.

One sentence on: International governmental organisations

Sometimes I have the feeling that if more than one international governmental organisation works on the same or a very similar issue in the field, the effect of the work of these organisations is not multiplied but rather divided by their number.

(I will elaborate on this issue when I have some more time.)